Greatest Creation
by enigma939
Summary: First person POV of Bruce Wayne, as he reflects on what he considers his 'greatest creation'...even greater than the Batman ...


**Greatest Creation**

**A/N: **This one-shot is told in first person from Bruce's POV.

Those who know me, and know my secrets, well, believe that the Batman was and is too date my greatest creation. By unleashing the Dark Knight upon the criminal element of Gotham City, it is their belief that I provided millions of people with a symbol of hope, and delivered at least some, if not all, of them from some manner of personal hell or the other. They believe that without the Batman, Gotham would have been lost to sane and innocent men years ago...

All that is certainly true enough, I will not deny that. But, as genuine, even touching, their appreciation is, it is also misplaced. For despite their protestations to the contrary, I do _not _consider the Batman to be my greatest creation.

But what I shall forever be grateful to the Batman for, is the undeniable fact that he (or it, I've never really understood which pronoun to use here!) led me to what _is _my greatest creation...

A lad named Dick Grayson.

I remember the day I'd first laid my eyes on him, well over a decade ago now. There he was, a boy of twelve, gracefully swinging through the air, his acrobatic movements admittedly superior to my own. In my nocturnal guise, I may have started to rule Gotham...but this boy, this innocent and supremely skilled child...he ruled the _skies_. And someday...the world perhaps!

But then, tragedy struck him, as it did me when I was a child...the crushed bodies of his parents lay on the circus ground, murdered, and in one split-second, the boy's world had come crashing down from the skies to the harshness of grim reality.

And in that same moment, I saw in the boy myself...or rather what I _had _been once, a lifetime ago. A child filled with innocence, with optimism, with potential...a child groomed to rule, a child who'd had his dreams shattered, whom fate had hardened into a seeker of vengeance...

I saw that and I swore that I would do anything..._everything _in my power, to ensure that this child would be followed to fulfil his true destiny...that he would be allowed to return to the skies and be happy there, as he once was. To be even _happier_, indeed!

So I took him under my wing, and where I had once forged myself into an instrument of vengeance, I forged Dick Grayson into a symbol of optimism. No, that's not quite right...he forged _himself _into that laughing, wise-cracking daredevil, who brought a much-needed ray of light, into the life of Gotham, and into _my _life. Alfred once told me that if not for Robin, swinging by my side night after night, fighting and joking by my side as we faced the endless ravages of Gotham's underworld and my own 'rogue's gallery' of insane 'villains', I would have ended up in Arkham. And I am often inclined to believe him...

Dick became the other _me_. The one who fought for truth and justice and hope not out of psychological compulsion, but youthful altruistic spirit! The one who was not feared by those he sought to protect, but admired! The one who was unafraid to form personal relationships, to lead a wholesome fulfilled life...There were times when I almost envied him his life...I wondered often why had I been unable to shape myself the way I had shaped Dick? Why was mine the life forever haunted by tragedy and death...while Dick, who had seen the same tragedy and death, was the very picture of pleasurable optimism?

The answer of course was _me_. I was the difference in Dick's life...the one who showed him the light much as I had chosen to let darkness consume me in my own youth. Not everything he is today is because of me...but I certainly set him down that path. I acknowledge that it is a tribute to myself, perhaps one of the few I shall ever allow myself...and I also admit that it is something which fills me with a pride unlike any other.

And it is a pride, for both me and for him, which renews itself every time I reflect on all he has accomplished, both in Gotham, and indeed all across the world and beyond as the leader of the Teen Titans. Despite our misunderstandings at the time, I was filled with particular pride the day he created the identity of Nightwing. Far from being the Batman's sidekick, he had become a great hero, a great legend in his _own _right! He was the hero who was not feared, but respected. The police liked him, Gordon liked him, the public liked him, the so-called 'superhero community' liked him...the _world _loved him in a way which almost rivalled their love for Superman.

Indeed, much like countless other individuals, I have, more recently, come to feel that I owe him a debt of gratitude! After all, he is the one who bore the burden of the Batman when I was 'away'...and more significantly, he is the one who reshaped my son Damien, the would-be assassin; forging him into a Robin, a hero, a potential symbol of good, much as I had done the same for him years earlier. Dick's accomplishment in fact possibly supersedes my own in that regard. I had never dreamed of ever seeing Damien clad in the bright colours of Robin, seamlessly fighting alongside the Batman...but Dick has succeeded where I had failed. And in doing so, he has deprived the monstrous legacy of Ras al Ghul an heir, and simultaneously salvaged a child's soul...

The Batman has rid Gotham City of much evil and saved lives, but has ultimately reinforced the same cycle of violence I'd set out to eliminate. To prey on predators, I myself was forced to become one. But Dick Grayson is not a predator. He is a compassionate individual committed to helping others, a symbol of hope, and an inspiration to millions. He has not just saved lives...he has saved _souls_; Damien's, mine, probably the whole of Gotham's! I am a great strategist, a great detective, a great _warrior_...but for all my accomplishments, I could never be what he is-a fundamentally good, honest, untainted human being. Despite the fact that I made him what he is.

It is for this reason that he is my greatest creation.

For the Batman is an idea. And Dick Grayson is a person. Ideas may conceive of wars, and conceive of a million strategies to win them. But they must ultimately be fought and won with the sweat and blood of _people_. And Robin, Nightwing, Batman or whatever the uniform he wears or the name he bears, is the best among such people...


End file.
